Our Team

Jacob Kraemer Tebes is Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology) and in the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, and Professor of Epidemiology (Social and Behavioral Sciences), Yale School of Public Health. He is also Director of the Division of Prevention and Community Research in the Department of Psychiatry, Executive Director of The Consultation Center, and Chief Psychologist at the Connecticut Mental Health Center. He received his B.S. in Psychology from Georgetown University and his Ph.D. in Clinical/Community Psychology from the State University of New York at Buffalo. After completing a doctoral fellowship at Yale, he joined the faculty in the Department of Psychiatry. His professional activities include research, service, teaching, and administration, much of it centered on issues related to enhancing equity and social justice, reducing systemic oppression, and promoting resilience. His research focuses on the promotion of resilience in at risk populations, usually through school- or community-wide trauma-informed interventions, and on the prevention of adolescent substance use. His scholarly work also has focused on incorporating equity, social justice, and anti-oppressive principles into research; community research methodology; program evaluation; philosophy of science; and team science. His research has been funded by NIH, SAMHSA, ACF, state and municipal agencies, and private foundations. Dr. Tebes also consults to public agencies (federal, state, municipal), healthcare organizations, community-based agencies, and schools on the development, implementation, and evaluation of programs and services, and on the use of data to inform practice, organizational performance, and policy. He teaches or has taught seminars to postdoctoral and doctoral fellows in community and clinical psychology and in prevention science on research methods, models of prevention, human diversity and multiculturalism, clinical methods of child intervention, and professional development. He is Program Director of a NIDA T32 postdoctoral research training program in substance abuse prevention, and has served on the leadership team of Yale training programs in interdisciplinary team science for faculty and postdoctoral fellows. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he served on a joint Yale School of Medicine/Yale New Haven Health System Task Force to develop and lead a tri-state, system-wide initiative to support healthcare workers and their families through interactive Stress and Resilience Town Halls. He is the former Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Community Psychology.

Joy S. Kaufman, PhD is a Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology Section), Yale School of Medicine and Deputy Director at the Yale Consultation Center where she also directs the areas of Program and Service System Evaluation and Evaluation Research. Trained as a Clinical and Community Psychologist, Dr. Kaufman conducts large-scale, multi-level evaluations of health service delivery systems, provides consultation to governmental and community organizations regarding these evaluations, and carries out related research. These evaluations take place in under-resourced communities; involve close partnerships with state and municipal governments, community organizations, and other public stakeholders; and generate data that informs program and policy development. A unique feature of her work is the training of public stakeholders to evaluate the services they receive or to utilize data so that they can provide rigorous and systematic feedback to improve services and participate in decision-making about their community. Dr. Kaufman's research interests include the identification of contextual factors that impact outcomes for individuals with emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Diana Belliveau. B.A. is a Research Assistant at the Family Violence Research Program in the Sullivan Lab.  Since joining the lab in 2019, Diana has provided support to three projects focused on intimate partner violence (IPV) among women.  Specifically, Ms. Belliveau supports research of individual and structural factors associated with firearm exposure among women who have experienced IPV; how exposure to IPV affects women’s ability engage in care for HIV; and how to build a community-based domestic violence support group that can better assist survivors.

Prior to working in the Sullivan Lab, Ms. Belliveau earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychological Science from Central Connecticut State University (CCSU).  As an undergraduate, Ms. Belliveau presented her undergraduate research, Antisocial Behavior Subtypes: Trauma, Parenting, and Psychopathy in a Non-Clinical Sample at the national Eastern Psychological Association Conference in March 2019. She was also a peer tutor for Research Methods in Psychology at CCSU.

Since she began working with trauma survivors during her undergraduate internship at the New Britain Superior Court, in the Family Violence Victim Advocates’ office, she has developed several research interests, which include understanding the effects of past trauma on psychological adjustment, the development/trajectory of mental illness, and trauma survivors’ use of maladaptive coping strategies (e.g., substance use).

Danielle Chiaramonte, Ph.D., is a T32 postdoctoral research fellow in the Consultation Center's Division of Prevention and Community Research. Dr. Chiaramonte currently works with the Family Violence Research Program in the Sullivan Lab and supports YaleEval with the 2020 Connecticut LGBTQ Community Survey. 

Dr. Chiaramonte's program of research promotes health equity for sexual and gender minorities through organizational and system-level change. As a community psychologist, Dr. Chiaramonte works from an ecological perspective and conduct research in collaboration with community organizations and/or the communities they serve. Two lines of research guide her work. The first lies at the intersection of HIV and gender-based violence (GBV), focusing on multisystemic responses to HIV and GBV among sexual and gender minorities. Her second line of work focuses on research methods and approaches that utilize existing community resources and elevate the voices of sexual and gender minority youth.

Dr. Connell’s research interests address contextual risk and protective processes that influence developmental and related outcomes for child and adolescent populations exposed to adversity. He has a particular focus on populations in contact with the child welfare and children’s mental health systems, including the intersection between parental substance use and child welfare (e.g., maltreatment and foster placement) outcomes. 

Elizabeth H. Connors, PhD, received her degree in Clinical Child and Community Psychology from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and is a licensed clinical psychologist. Her research program focuses on improving the quality of mental health promotion, prevention and intervention services for children, adolescents and their families in critical access points such as schools and primary care settings. Dr. Connors is conducting stakeholder-informed research to discover the most practical ways to make school mental health treatment more student- and family- centered with ongoing, collaborative use of progress data. Dr. Connors is also involved in community-partnered program evaluation and quality improvement consultation and coaching to school, district and state teams to improve their mental health service capacity and performance. She collaborates with the University of Maryland National Center for School Mental Health to advance research, practice, policy and training about comprehensive school mental health system quality and sustainability nationwide.

Cindy A. Crusto, Ph.D., Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology Section), Yale University School of Medicine, is the Director of Program Evaluation and Child Trauma Research at The Consultation Center. Dr. Crusto has more than 20 years of experience in developing, implementing, and evaluating preventive interventions in schools and community agencies. She also has extensive experience providing training and technical assistance to schools and to community-based organizations on the evaluation of prevention programs. She is interested in culturally relevant interventions for children from racial/ethnic minority and low-income backgrounds and in school-based behavioral health services. Dr. Crusto's research examines the impact of family violence on children and the ecological influences on child and family well-being, and includes rigorous evaluations of community-based initiatives involving substance use and violence prevention, and the promotion of school readiness.

Dr. Crusto earned a B.A. in psychology from Vassar College, an M.A. in clinical-community psychology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a Ph.D. in clinical-community psychology from the University of South Carolina. She completed pre-doctoral and postdoctoral fellowships in clinical-community psychology at Yale University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry.

Derrick Gordon, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry (Psychology Section) at Yale University School of Medicine, is the Director of the Program on Male Development in the Division of Prevention and Community Research of the Department of Psychiatry, and is a Core scientist in the Community Research Core of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA). Dr. Gordon has considerable experience in intervention and prevention development having served as an investigator on several federal, NIH, and state funded projects and studies focused on those factors that either support or undermine men transitioning from prison back to the community; the engagement of low-income, non-custodial fathers; the identification and service of adolescent fathers committed to child protection services; and men mandated to batterer intervention groups in the community. He is currently a co-investigator and a minority supplement recipient on an NIH funded project that examines the STI risk of heterosexual young men to their pregnant female partners. As part of his supplement, Dr. Gordon is interested in understanding how the young men use preventive health care services and the factors that either facilitate or inhibit their access. Dr. Gordon’s work with men has and continues to focus on increasing the health of men and their positive involvement in family and community life. In his mentorship role, pre- and post doctoral fellows get to explore with Dr. Gordon how issues like adolescent fatherhood, low income fatherhood status, transitioning from prison to the community, and men’s access and use of health care services impact their efforts to be healthy community members. Overall Dr. Gordon in his research seeks to identify those factors that enhance the access and use of preventive and indicated health care services by men on the “fringes.”

Amy Griffin is the Director of Health Evaluation Initiatives at The Consultation Center. Ms. Griffin holds a master’s degree in Communications and has advanced training in Family and Child Ecology and nonprofit management.

Ms. Griffin brings more than 20 years of experience providing consultation on the development and implementation of program evaluations to nonprofit agencies, coalitions, foundations, and local and state departments. She trains nonprofit and state-level organizations in evaluation principles, techniques, and design, and frequents as an invited guest speaker at universities on evaluation, consultation, and group facilitation. Most recently, Ms. Griffin was selected by the Connecticut Department of Public Health (CTDPH) to provide specialized training to health practitioners in the state through a grant opportunity from the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors. She also a member of the CTDPH Advisory Panel for evaluation implementation for their Diabetes Prevention Program.

Ana Hernandez. B.S.  is a Research Assistant in the Family Violence Research Program in the Sullivan Lab, wherein Ana researches intimate partner violence (IPV), firearm exposure, post-traumatic stress, substance use, and HIV/sexual risk. Ms. Hernandez’s research interests center on trauma and posttraumatic stress responses. More specifically, she is interested in the retrieval of traumatic memories of bilingual and/or multilingual speakers and its effect on memory details. Throughout her research career, Ms. Hernandez has developed expertise in survey programming, trauma-informed interviewing practices, and cultural adaptation and translation of research materials.

Ms. Hernandez holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Connecticut where she completed training in the Research Assistant Program through the Office of Undergraduate Research. Throughout her baccalaureate training, she worked in the Dr. Meyer’s Language and Brain Lab researching neurobiology and the influence of talker idiolect on phonetic adaptation. Additionally, Ms. Hernandez has experience researching health risk factors for cardiovascular disease from her work with Dr. Bruce Blanchard in the Department of Allied Health Sciences.